EU – Page 3 – The Burning Platform

Rotten to the Core

Brexit and financial markets’ subsequent reactions expose the corruption at the heart of the world’s socio-political systems.

Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

Coercion is inseparable from corruption. When a group coerces with impunity, it steals from, lies to, defrauds, and enslaves the subjugated. The dominant group invariably develops a morally comforting ideology of its superiority and the subjugated’s inferiority. Such relationships are the essence of corruption.

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Every square inch on the planet is subject to the jurisdiction of one or more coercive regimes, with their attendant corruption and fraud. Trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen, et al., are extracted from the productive and diverted to governments, who buy political support. Trillions more are borrowed. Central banks issue fiat debt units backed only by laws mandating their acceptance and extract funding for governments via the hidden tax of debt depreciation and the hidden theft of debt monetization and interest rate suppression. Regulation allows governments to reward cronies and extort and terrorize the unfavored. Perpetual wars benefit militaries and those who supply the armaments, with part of their profits recycled to those championing war. This is pervasive, legal corruption. One can only guess at the extent of sub rosa criminality, which may dwarf it.

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You Say You Want a Devolution?

Chaos will present opportunities.

Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

The Civil War, as it’s known in the north, or the War of Northern Aggression, as it’s known in the south, supposedly “settled” an issue for time and all eternity: that the smaller political units known as states could not leave the larger political unit known as the United States, at least not without the larger unit’s consent. Unless they emigrate, 320 million people are bound to a political arrangement from which there is no other escape hatch, and the 50 states don’t have the option to leave. Similar strictures are in effect around the world. Why?

Centralization, command, and control—the tendencies that defined the twentieth centuries—are in their death throes, done in by their failures and the residual progress they’ve failed to kill. The signs are everywhere. If war is the health of the state, then states are sickly indeed. The most militaristic government on the planet, that of the United States, has not cleanly won a war since 1945, unless one wants to call Grenada a war. What has stymied the US has not been superior military force—the US has the world’s biggest arsenal and most technologically advanced military—but the force that is stymying centralization at every turn: decentralization.

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As Ukraine Collapses, Europeans Tire of US Interventions

Guest Post by Ron Paul

On Sunday Ukrainian prime minister Yatsenyuk resigned, just four days after the Dutch voted against Ukraine joining the European Union. Taken together, these two events are clear signals that the US-backed coup in Ukraine has not given that country freedom and democracy. They also suggest a deeper dissatisfaction among Europeans over Washington’s addiction to interventionism.

According to US and EU governments – and repeated without question by the mainstream media – the Ukrainian people stood up on their own in 2014 to throw off the chains of a corrupt government in the back pocket of Moscow and finally plant themselves in the pro-west camp. According to these people, US government personnel who handed out cookies and even took the stage in Kiev to urge the people to overthrow their government had nothing at all to do with the coup.

When Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was videotaped bragging about how the US government spent $5 billion to “promote democracy” in Ukraine, it had nothing to do with the overthrow of the Yanukovich government. When Nuland was recorded telling the US Ambassador in Kiev that Yatsenyuk is the US choice for prime minister, it was not US interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine. In fact, the neocons still consider it a “conspiracy theory” to suggest the US had anything to do with the overthrow.

YELLEN, DRAGHI, KURODA: DERANGED LAB RATS

The stock market has regained all of its loses year to date as economic indicators continue to flash red, corporate profits continue to plunge, consumers continue to spend less at retailers, real wages continue to fall, and housing sales continue to decline. The entire dead cat bounce has been generated through corporate stock buybacks, Wall Street lemmings trying to make up for their terrible year to date investing performance, and central bankers who will stop at nothing to verbally manipulate markets higher – since their monetary machinations over the last seven years have been a miserable failure in reviving the real economy.

As John Hussman points out, the market is poised to deliver nothing over the next decade, with a 40% to 55% “dip” in the foreseeable future. I wonder how many barely sentient, iGadget addicted, non-questioning, normalcy bias dependent zombies are prepared for a third Federal Reserve generated market collapse in the last 15 years?

From a long-term investment standpoint, the stock market remains obscenely overvalued, with the most historically-reliable measures we identify presently consistent with zero 10-12 year S&P 500 nominal total returns, and negative expected real returns on both horizons. From a cyclical standpoint, I continue to expect that the completion of the current market cycle will likely take the S&P 500 down by about 40-55% from present levels; an outcome that would not be an outlier or worst-case scenario, but instead a rather run-of-the-mill cycle completion from present valuations.

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“Never Seen Anything Like This Before” – Sweden Stunned At “Unreal” Surge In Refugee Sex Attacks

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/12/2016 13:18 -0500

As a direct result of Europe’s refugee crisis, new and very unpleasant social fractures have started to emerge.

One particularly troubling issue is the extent to which officials have tended to “blame the victim” in the ever more frequent sex attacks resulting from Europe’s refugee surge, something we first touched upon earlier this week. For instance, Cologne mayor Henriette Reker drew sharp criticism for suggesting that it was German womens’ duty to prevent assaults by keeping would-be assailants “at arm’s length.”

Then there was the now infamous case of the 17-year-old Danish girl who faced a fine from police after she allegedly used “illegal” pepper spray to deter an attacker.

In the most recent example of authorities suggesting that Europeans should adapt to threats rather than compelling authorities to protect citizens, police in Sweden’s Östersund advised women not to walk around by themselves at night, during at press conference on Monday.

As reported on Tuesday, “women in a town in northern Sweden have been warned not to walk alone at night in the wake of a spike in violent assaults and attempted rapes.

Police in the town of Östersund made the unusual move to ask women not to go out unaccompanied after dark, after reports of eight brutal attacks, some by ‘men of foreign appearance’, in just over two weeks.”

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Europe Moving Into Meltdown?

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

We see a massive banking crisis. The European banks are in deep trouble. Deutsche Bank posted a shocking €6.7 billion euro loss with its shares falling 10% in a day. HSBC bought Republic National Bank in New York for a bit more than that. Barclay’s in pulling out of all emerging markets cutting 1,000+ jobs.The collapse in commodities will reek havoc of all emerging market countries, but there is one economy which nobody pays attention to closely. That is Germany. Yes it is the largest economy and main supporter of the Euro. They need open borders and the Euro to maintain their economy which is EXPORT driven. China is advancing more rapidly than Germany and has focused on trying to develop its internal economy. Spain was the richest nation in Europe with all the gold coming in from America. But they failed to develop their internal economy and collapsed. Germany is declining. It cannot be sustain with open borders and the Euro because the rest of Europe is in serious decline. The refugee crisis is a nightmare and now Italy demand taxpayer money to bailout banks fearful that a bail-in will cause a revolution.

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Where sexual harassment is most prevalent in the EU

You will find more statistics at Statista

Statista’s most recent chart featured in the Independent shows the regions of the European Union where sexual harassment is most prevalent. According to research conducted by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, northern Europe and Sweden in particular are have high rates of sexual harassment among women.

Happy New Year — Bail-In Passed for Europe’s Banks

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

The mainstream media is not extensively reporting on the “experimental” bail-in that the EU imposed on Cyrus. The bail-in, that they swore would never be applied to Europe, will officially begin in January. This new power will be in the interest of taxpayers as they will no longer be forced to pay for failed banks that were created by the childish structure of the euro that was created by lawyers who never understood the economy. But wait a minute — aren’t taxpayers the people with deposits in banks? Hm. Moving to electronic money is also about preventing bank runs. The bottom-line here is that they will just take your money to save bankers. Eliminating cash accomplishes two things: (1) they get to tax everything, and (2) you cannot withdraw money from banks.

The bail-in directive was agreed upon on January 1, 2015, and the bail-in system will take effect on January 1, 2016. So here we are, just in case you missed this one. Their website states:

Parliament and Council Presidency negotiators reached a political agreement Wednesday on the draft bank recovery and resolution directive, the first step towards setting up an EU system to deal with struggling banks. This directive will introduce the “bail-in” principle by January 2016, thereby ensuring that taxpayers will not be first in line to pay for bank failures.

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